E.N. A little about the process of study in your school: how does it occur and for how long is the course of study intended?

V.E. The course of study is long enough, seven years. This suits only those people whom God sends. I have many who leave without finishing, but this proves just not to be helpful. One of these students [who left] entered into the Gefsimanskii Monastery in the Holy Land which is in the Karlovatskaja Jurisdiction [the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad], and another student, who did not finish, leaped into Roman Catholicism...So my friends, it is better to go to the very end.

In principle, I have such that my students should not simply pass through the course of study, but also through the present day inner school in the Church. People come to me who have gone to church for many years, and even more so, people come who read the Holy Word every day, and who read spiritual literature. I always try to meet that which they want from me. Many come to the school in the middle of the school process, that is in the third or fourth year... They requested me, for instance, to go again to the Holy Writings of the Old and New Testament, especially the Old, because it is less known. And I started this work with them, proceeding, somehow, from their personalities. Therefore I passed the Book of Genesis with them and then they read further on their own to the Book of Revelations, and so on, right up to the Second Coming. That is, I give them much material and much skill, and instruct them in how to work and how to read the Holy Writing. We are now passing the Book of Job, and we will take three or four chapters each class, not more because there is a tendency in the Book of Job to read the first two chapters and the last ones and thus one happens to miss the main ones. It is only a small example but it shows the way.

My classes are always improvised. Even if I prepare for them, then sometimes I see that I still set out on a completely different path than to the one which I prepared. Apparently, it is so intended. After each class, I go to the Lavra and I order the prayer service for all who attended. We still have on duty a confessor (as a matter of fact the deputy of the Lavra appointed him), Archimandrite Georgi (Tertuishnikov) who gives talks at “Radonezh” [a radio station]. But this confessor on duty is only used in the last resort as would be in the case of some pointed necessity, because my students are people who are all in the Church and all have their own confessors and never happen to be passive in the Church.

We now have all witnessed a miracle: persecutions on the Church Herself have ceased. When I opened the school, Fr. Ioann (Ekonomtsev) asked me two questions: how many people did I have and did not the militia [the police] disturb me. He did not say to me that the legislation of 1929 existed [the law that banned religious education], he only asked, “From where did you come?” This was partly understandable.